Lone lorn creetur’

Lone lorn creetur’ is an expression of loneliness that first belongs to Mrs. Gummidge’s habitual account of her own misfortunes, then recurs in scenes of bereavement, separation, and shame. Its changing uses give the phrase a wider reach: it names not only the feeling of being left alone, but also the vulnerability that others may recognize and answer with care.

Mrs. Gummidge’s Self-Description

Mrs. Gummidge says she feels her troubles more than anyone else and calls herself a lone lorn creetur’. In her view, nearly everything goes contrary to her; the phrase compresses that grievance into a familiar, self-pitying refrain. David Copperfield observes that her spirits have not improved since his previous visit, so the expression is associated with an ongoing disposition rather than a single sudden sorrow.

The wording also shapes an ordinary communal ritual. When Daniel Peggotty offers her the old shoe to throw after Clara Peggotty and Mr. Barkis for luck, Mrs. Gummidge refuses: reminders of people who are not lonely and lorn only make matters worse for her. Daniel urges her to take part, but she insists that, because she feels so much, she can do less. The wedding custom brings her private sense of exclusion into the middle of a shared celebration; the phrase marks the distance she feels from the happiness around her.

David’s Borrowed Language of Loss

After Clara Copperfield’s death, David breaks into a desolate cry and feels himself an orphan in the wide world. He weeps until he falls asleep, wakes and cries again, and thinks of the closed, hushed house, his mother beneath the familiar tree, and the funeral he is going home to attend. The expression’s emotional territory thus extends beyond Mrs. Gummidge: it fits the loneliness of a child suddenly bereaved.

When David is sent away at ten, the narrative explicitly imagines him as a lone lorn child, as Mrs. Gummidge might have said. In mourning clothes and a worn white hat, with his small trunk beside him in the post-chaise, he watches the house and church recede and his mother’s grave disappear from view. The echo links his forced departure and loss of home to Mrs. Gummidge’s language of isolation, while making the phrase part of David’s retrospective account of childhood.

That connection also matters when David defends Clara Peggotty to Betsey Trotwood. He recalls her devotion to him and his mother, including her care for his mother in death, and says that her home would have been his refuge had he not feared imposing on her because of her humble station. His grief breaks through as he tries to explain their bond. The episode sets the expression’s loneliness against the possibility of shelter in another person’s home, even when class and circumstance make that refuge feel difficult to claim.

From Private Grievance to Compassion

When Daniel Peggotty is overwhelmed by Emily’s disappearance and prepares to search for her, Mrs. Gummidge steps between him and Ham. She calls him her lone lorn Dan’l, asks him to forgive her for having been a burden, and recalls how he took her in when she was a poor widow and Emily and Ham were orphans. Her familiar language does not remain a complaint: she uses it to acknowledge Daniel’s sorrow and remind him of the history of mutual shelter that can help him bear it. David, moved by Daniel’s tears, cries too.

Daniel later pleads with Mrs. Steerforth to save Emily from disgrace. He speaks of loving her as his child, insists that wealth could not buy her return, and says that her family would accept her without reproach even if they had to live apart from her. The appeal gives a counterpoint to loneliness as abandonment: Daniel’s love persists, though he is prepared to bear separation rather than make Emily’s shame worse. Here the phrase’s emotional world is accompanied by a concrete offer of belonging and forgiveness.

Martha’s account makes the expression’s association with isolation darker. Haunted by the river, she sees it as a companion for people like herself: it passes through dismal streets and flows toward a troubled sea, and she feels drawn to follow it. She regrets that she did not have a better heart, recalls that Emily had always treated her kindly, and describes separation from her as the bitterest part of losing everything dear. Martha also fears that people will say she corrupted Emily because they remember the two young women’s former companionship. The recurring language therefore gathers bereavement, social disgrace, and exclusion into a shared vocabulary of loneliness, while the acts of listening, sheltering, and refusing blame show that isolation is not the only possible response.